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NEWS ROUNDUP

IAM votes | No Wordle | Final GOTV push

Monday, November 4, 2024

 

MACHINISTS STRIKE at BOEING

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing CEO delivered ultimatum to Machinists. Union leaders believe him — Speaking with The Times, Holden revealed for the first time that the reason he had recommended the company’s first offer of a 25% wage increase over four years — which initiated the strike with a 95% rejection vote on Sept. 12 — was because Boeing made the offer conditional on his recommendation. On Thursday, this was again a condition on the improved offer. But Holden said the motive for his decision this time was deeper. It was the recognition, he said, that “this is the inflection point … in the strike, where we could continue to stay out, but I can’t guarantee that we would not go backward.”

► From the IAM: “During every negotiation and strike, we must continually evaluate where our leverage stands going forward. We believe that we have secured one of the strongest contracts in the aerospace industry. Many other bargaining units will be inspired by our strength and the results you all achieved.”

► From KOMO — Boeing machinists are holding a contract vote that could end their 7-week strike — More than 30,000 unionized Boeing machinists are set to vote on the company’s latest contract offer on Monday. If approved, it could end the seven-week strike that hasshut down production of most Boeing passenger planes.

 

STRIKES

► From the NYT Tech Guild

Editor’s note: the union is calling on readers to honor the digital picket line and not play NYT games like Wordle or use the NYT Cooking app. 

► From the Washington Post — New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike ahead of Election Day — The New York Times Tech Guild walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. Monday, making good on a threat that has loomed over the company for months and could disrupt the newspaper’s ability to cover this week’s election results. The Tech Guild called the open-ended unfair labor practice strike after increasingly intense negotiations between the guild and Times management failed to yield a contract agreement, Tech Guild representatives told The Washington Post.

► From KITV — Hilton hotel workers’ strike tentatively over — After 40 days of being on strike, the hotel workers’ strike at Hilton Hawaiian Village could be over. Saturday night, UNITE HERE Local 5 – the union representing more than 1,800 hotel workers at the Hilton Hawaiian Village – said it reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. Workers are expected to hold a ratification vote on Monday, November 4, with workers returning to work on Tuesday, November 5. Once ratified, the 40-day strike would officially come to an end.

 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — What Seattle meant to Quincy Jones, and what he meant to the city — Though he lived in the Northwest for just eight years (1943-1951) — four of them in Bremerton, four in Seattle — the Pacific Northwest was where Jones discovered music, his lifetime pursuit, and where he also was introduced, at Garfield High School, to a diverse neighborhood that lacked the rigid racial and class lines that kept Black and white culture more segregated elsewhere.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Gov. Inslee approves huge Horse Heaven wind farm stretching 24 miles south of Tri-Cities — The approval for the project includes eased turbine restrictions for endangered ferruginous hawks and traditional cultural properties compared to those initially recommended by the council. Inslee’s only regret is that it took years for the final approval of the project, he indicated, and told the council to expect him to discuss the matter with it.

► From KING 5 — Open enrollment: Anyone who lives in Washington state is eligible for health and dental insurance — Open enrollment to buy health and dental insurance through Washington Healthplanfinder started on Nov. 1 and will run through Jan. 15. The coverage options are available to anyone living in Washington state, regardless of immigration status.

 

AEROSPACE

► From Reuters — Spirit AeroSystems presents Wichita engineering union with four-year contract offer — Spirit AeroSystems has presented its engineering union in Wichita with a four-year contract offer, the labor group and the aero parts supplier said on Friday. The new offer provides for an average wage increase of about 24% over the life of the contract, Spirit said in a statement. The SPEAA union said it recommends that members accept the contract offer, which would cover more than 1,000 engineers based in Wichita.

Editor’s note: per SPEEA, “While negotiations always involve give and take, the team unanimously recommends the offer based on the significant improvements in key areas, including wages, benefits and work-life balance,” said Rich Plunkett, SPEEA’s director of strategic development and the lead spokesperson for the negotiating team.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the OPB — After stalled negotiations, OSU graduate students ready to strike — Earlier this week, 93% of voting members represented by OSU’s Coalition of Graduate Employees union said yes to authorizing a strike. The union plans to send a 10-day notice of its intent to strike on Nov. 2. Such notices are required before the union can legally take to the picket lines. A CGE strike could occur as early as Nov. 12. The union represents more than 1,700 OSU graduate employees, including teaching and research assistants.

 

NATIONAL

► From the AP — College athletes are getting paid and fans are starting to see a growing share of the bill — When the NCAA reluctantly approved payments to players for use of their names, images and likenesses (NIL) in 2021, boosters who used to give to schools and their athletic departments started funneling money to collectives — independent organizations that raised the money and paid the athletes. Those collectives are becoming more and more closely linked to the universities.

► From the AP — Federal Reserve is set to cut rates again while facing a hazy post-election outlook — On Thursday, the Fed’s policymakers, led by Chair Jerome Powell, are on track to cut their benchmark rate by a quarter-point, to about 4.6%, after having implemented a half-point reduction in September. Economists expect another quarter-point rate cut in December and possibly additional such moves next year.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From NBC — Harris slams Speaker Mike Johnson for saying the GOP may repeal CHIPS Act — According to the Commerce Department, the CHIPS and Science Act has led to $53 billion in spending on semiconductors; $30 billion in private sector investments, spanning 23 projects and 15 states; 16 new semiconductor plants and about 115,000 new manufacturing and construction jobs by end of 2024.

► From the Spokesman Review — On eve of election, Washington GOP tells Spanish-speaking voters Democrats ‘hate you’ and ‘hate God’ — On the eve of an election marked by increasingly heated rhetoric, the Washington State Republican Party sent text messages to Spanish-speaking voters on Friday alleging that Democratic candidates want to “eliminate the Spanish language” and “support the chemical castration of your children in school without your knowledge or consent.” “They hate you, they hate your family, they hate God and they hate the truth,” the message sent Friday reads in Spanish, referring to three Latina Democrats running in the majority-Hispanic 14th legislative district. Meanwhile, the state GOP sent an English-language message to voters in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District. That message, sent with an image of the communist hammer-and-sickle symbol on a rainbow background, calls the freshman congresswoman “a Democrat socialist” and claims that she lives in Portland and “supports defund the police, abortion until birth, castrating minor children/confusing them about their gender, higher taxes, and less efficient government spending.” In a phone interview on Sunday, Washington State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh stood by the text messages.

► From Wired — Canvassers for Elon Musk’s America PAC Were Fired and Stranded in Michigan After Speaking Out  — A dozen Black canvassers were tricked, threatened, and driven in seatless U-Haul vans. They were fired after WIRED reported on their plight—some without full pay or a way back home. Speaking publicly for the first time about her ordeal, Muldrow says that the canvassers in her group were fired with little explanation beyond a complaint that someone had spoken with the press. Many, including her, were still owed money. Muldrow had to find her own way home; others are still stranded in Michigan.

► From the Guardian — Elon Musk’s canvassing operation sued in California for alleged labor law violations — The suit accuses Musk’s America Pac, which has poured more than $100m into this year’s election campaign, of “willful violations of the California labor code” by paying the plaintiffs less than it promised and refusing to make up the difference. Musk’s ground-game operation has come under repeated scrutiny in recent days following a report in the Guardian that canvassers may have skipped as many as a quarter of the houses they claimed to have visited in Arizona and Nevada, and a second report in Wired that revealed hired canvassers in Michigan were not told which campaign they were working for until they had already signed on.

► From the Washington State Standard — Inslee activates Washington National Guard ahead of Election Day — The “purely precautionary measure” comes in response to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s nationwide warnings of threats to election infrastructure and a deliberately set fire that damaged and destroyed hundreds of ballots in a Vancouver drop box on Monday.

► From NBC — DACA recipients are able to sign up for Obamacare for the first time — The change — which coincided with the first day of the ACA’s open enrollment period — marks a pivotal moment for the more than 535,000 active DACA recipients in the U.S. That lack of access, experts say, has led to high rates of uninsured among DACA recipients, sometimes referred to as “Dreamers.”

► From the Washington State Standard — Survey finds strong support for Trump among WA prison population — Washington’s state prison population isn’t allowed to vote — but if they were, about half would vote for Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump in 2024. “There’s been this narrative that most people behind bars are going to be Democrats because they think Democrats are soft on crime,” said Kelly Olson of Free The Vote Washington, a coalition promoting voting rights for people involved in the criminal justice system. “It’s not a monolith,” Olson said.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Guardian — One year on, we know this: Sweden’s trade unions are more than a match for Elon Musk — It has been more than a year since Swedish workers came out on strike against his electric car giant Tesla. Swedish industrial union IF Metall has been demanding better wages, benefits and conditions for mechanics in Tesla repair shops across the country, but fundamentally what is at stake is the Swedish labour market model of collective bargaining which Musk refuses to recognise. It is the first and only strike against Tesla anywhere in the world. And it has now become the longest-running strike in Sweden for a century.

► From CNN — TikTok sued in France over harmful content that allegedly led to two suicides — “The parents want TikTok’s legal liability to be recognized in court,” she said, adding: “This is a commercial company offering a product to consumers who are, in addition, minors. They must, therefore, answer for the product’s shortcomings.”

 

The Stand posts links to local, national and international labor news every weekday morning. Subscribe to get daily news in your inbox. 

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